


Tumblr essay (and responses) on fannish commenting culture, and comments as "fannish currency"

by greywash



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Beta relationships, Commenting culture, Comments as "currency", Editing relationships, Fan Culture - Freeform, Imported from Tumblr, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, The fannish gift economy, constructive criticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-13 05:17:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: Porting over a Tumblr essay I wrote last week about the idea of comments as "fannish currency," and the intersection between that concept and the fannish "gift economy" alongside the increasing monetization of fannish work.





	1. Original Essay

**Author's Note:**

> I had—as I think a lot of people have had, over the past few days—a _lot_ of trouble figuring out how best to archive this, since so much of the conversational experience of Tumblr lives in other people's posts. I decided, finally, that the best I could do was to port over my part of the conversation, and request that Archive.org crawl specific pages that had other people's commentary, so I could link to it in a way that wasn't going to get wiped off the face of the internet.
> 
> That said... mostly, this is a static record of a thing I never exactly intended to be static: I really did want, and do want, to have an ongoing, evolving discussion about how to bridge the cultural gap I'm talking about in the original post: between fans who feel like concrit is an important part of how they want to do fandom, and fans who really, really do not. I stand by my sort of general point, which is: I want there to be some kind of consent firewall between authors/artists and readers/viewers, when it comes to negative feedback, and I want it to be understood that it's inappropriate for readers/viewers to offer negative feedback without affirmative authorial consent, _whether or not_ that criticism might be constructive, useful, and welcomed in other venues. That said, I don't really think I still like my original suggested wording (see Pt. 2, my discussion with **porcupine-girl** ), but I am leaving it in the original essay (Pt. 1) for the like... historic record of this conversation. RIP, conversation, you will die like you lived: on Tumblr, you poor bastard.
> 
> Also, as of posting, some of the links still go to Tumblr; I will try to update them to more persistent links as I can.

Okay, well. So a bunch of stuff about fannish commenting culture is going around again, including this [very excellent ask reply](https://web.archive.org/web/20181207005900/http://greenbergsays.tumblr.com/post/180629850278/i-agree-mostly-but-im-saying-if-i-see-someone) by @greenbergsays, which I originally wrote this post in reply to and then decided I'd be better off not jumping all over their thread. And besides, that's very much not the only post on the subject I've seen recently, so. Here we go.

There's this thing that gets lost, I think, in a lot of Discourse™ about commenting, which is that—especially for older fans, who have been in fandom for years/decades before Ko-Fi or Patreon was even a gleam in some programmer's eye, and _also_ before (a little more squashily) self-publishing via Amazon et cetera became _half_ as easy as it is now, is that **fandom has, historically, been a culture that ran on a gift economy**. In other words: not only was fannish work not monetized, but the _fact_ that it was not monetized was an important part of how fans related to each other on a social and cultural level. This was mentioned in ["The Money Question" ep](https://web.archive.org/web/20181207005939/http://fansplaining.com/post/179623094483/transcript-episode-86-the-money-question) of @fansplaining which I previously reblogged without comment, so—I guess this is my previously-redacted comment. O well.

The idea that fandom runs on a gift economy, and that that is part of the cultural and social mores of fandom, is probably—well. What's a way of saying "dated" that doesn't sound like I'm making a negative judgement? That's certainly not my intent—I am _part_ of this group of fans for whom monetizing fanfic violates a core cultural principle of what I like about fandom, but—it _is_ dated!! And it's dated in part because the economy—like, the real-life meatspace economy—has become _so_ difficult and _so_ unfriendly to creatives that a lot of people in fandom, as elsewhere, don't have the option of not hustling for cash every place that they can—which includes, in the end, their fannish output.

But…………….. 

…the problem is that the more people there are in fandom who are asking for money for their work: their labor and time and energy—which, just to be clear, I _absolutely support_ people doing if they need and/or want to do that—the more this idea that the _culture_ of fandom is a **_gift-based culture_** becomes diluted, because people instead start treating it as an **_exchange-based culture_**. Because _some people_ are asking for money for their work! Which they have every right to do! Making shit is hard! Again, it takes vast amounts of labor and time and energy! But clearly, if they are doing it, not asking for or expecting compensation is maybe no longer a core cultural value of fannish creation.

And this is where stuff gets dicey, because _some people asking for money_ means you have _also_ have more people in fandom who think of fandom as a place in which there are products (e.g. fic), and those products can be exchanged for currency (e.g. money). And that mindset continues out of the arena where there are people asking, explicitly, for money for their fic; and into this sort of mushy semi-monetized area—not just Ko-Fi and Patreon, et cetera, where the goal is to support a _creator_ and not purchase a _creation_ , but also into the area where people  cross-advertise on their fannish blogs their original fic, either stuff that's original from the ground up or fannish fic they're scraping the serial numbers off and self- or professionally publishing; and also into the arena where people are writing fic as part of fundraisers—and into the area where where people are not asking for money at all, but they think, or the people interacting with their fic think, that the equivalent currency to be offered/requested in exchange for all that labor and time and energy _is **comments**_.

Except—if you're a _customer_ , in an exchange economy, trading currency for goods and/or services, you have a right to receive the thing you want for your currency. And **_this_** is where the disconnect comes in, in terms of fannish commenting culture.

If, on the one hand, you have **a fannish customer** , who is aiming to participate in a sort of… synonym of the mainstream capitalist economy, in which you exchange currency for goods and/or services, and your currency is some combination of comments and/or money, then yes! Of course! Of course those customers are going to try to ask for what they want for their currency!! Because that is how capitalism works. That is one of the only rights you actually have, actually, as a customer in a capitalist culture: to try and invest your currency in ways that get you the thing that you want.

But if you _also_ have, on the other hand, loads and loads and _loads_ of people participating in fandom as **fannish gift-givers** , who invest loads of labor and time and energy in something which they then give to fandom _as a gift_ , expecting nothing in return—then _yes! Of course!_ Of _course_ they are going to be hurt and offended and wounded when you come into their comments and tell them all the things you didn't like about their gift, _because in a gift economy, that is a dick thing to do_.

I believe really, really strongly that we can't get into the business of policing "how people do fandom," because the whole reason why fandom _works_ is because it is an extremely broad tent. But that means that we have to be, in the current era and, yes, _especially_ in the current economic climate, _extremely sensitive_ to how other people do fandom in ways that we do not do fandom.

If Discourse™ _can_ have a point, then the point of comment-related Discourse™ should be to try and communicate this: a lot of people in fandom are in fandom to participate in a gift economy, which feels really different from an exchange or capitalist economy. Alongside that, a lot of people in fandom are using fandom as an extension of the mainstream capitalist/exchange economy, often because the mainstream capitalist economy is letting them down. We need to be really, really careful to not assume that other people in fandom are interacting with fandom from the same side of that divide that we are.

The safe way to interact with a fic is, always, to not leave unsolicited critical comments in comments. _Always_. This isn't because people who treat fandom as a gift economy are, like, more right, or whatever; it's because you are _definitely_ going to hurt and offend any authors who are operating as though fandom is a gift economy by leaving unsolicited critical comments, and hurting people's feelings is rude. It's really that simple! Don't do that! Don't not do that because it's _uniformly bad_ , don't do it because your odds are just statistically good that you're going to hurt someone's feelings and hurting people's feelings is rude. Kindergarten stuff, okay?

"But Gins," you say, "then how do I, a fannish consumer who would like to exchange currency-comments for the fic I want, actually conduct that transaction?"

I think this is still an open question, culturally speaking? Because a lot of authors in fandom are simply not going to be open to engaging with you in that transaction, and that, my friend, is just something you are going to have to deal with. You don't have a right to the labor and time and energy of other people who want to come to fandom to create a gift, any more than they have a right to the (lbr, _much smaller_ ) outlay of labor and time and energy you would expend to leave them a nice comment, or walk away without commenting. But I do understand that a lot of people _do_ want to exchange comments for fic—and also, that a lot of authors _are_ open to receiving comments _explicitly as compensation_ for their work. 

So I'd like to propose, for starters, that you take the time to a) say something you _did_ like about the story; and then b) ask the author if they accept "fic suggestions or requests" (this wording is important!), and c) if so, how they would like you to send them. A lot of authors—including authors on the gift-economy side of the divide!—will accept fic suggestions and requests in a private arena, like email or Tumblr asks, that they would find extremely hurtful if they were received in comments. And I propose saying, specifically, "fic suggestions or requests" because it sounds, to me, quite gentle? It would not ruin my day if someone came into my comments and said, "I really like the exchange over breakfast, and I really enjoy your style! Do you accept fic suggestions or requests?", in part because I can lie to myself and say "oh, they just want me to write them <insert topic I don't want to write here>, not tell me all the things wrong with my fic," and still feel pretty great about myself. But, yeah, I'd like it if other people on my "gift economy" side of the weighed in on the wording issue. Is "fic suggestions or requests" okay, do we think?

Similarly… I'd like to propose that, if someone comes into your comments and offers unsolicited criticism in them, and you are on the "gift economy" side of the equation, that you **actually reply to those commenters directly and say** : "Hi, I don't want unsolicited criticism on my fic. I'm in fandom to make stuff and have fun, and this comment hurt my feelings/made me not want to write/<insert your emotional experience here> and I would rather that commenters didn't comment at all, rather than leave me negative comments."

I think that a big part of the problem is that those of us on the "gift economy" side of things likewise believe that _comments_ are a gift. But they're not a gift anymore, if they're being left by people who are treating them like currency. At that point, you—the gift economy writer—has a right to engage in them as such, and **actively reject the forms of currency you do not want to accept**.

The place where the actual _hurt_ happens now is that gift economy writers create stuff, and exchange economy commenters leave critical comments, and not only do gift economy writers feel like the polite thing to do is not just to take it, but also then _thank those commenters for their gift of a painful, critical comment_. Which, I mean, of course, that is an awful thing to have to do!! You showed up with a cake, someone ate it and then crapped in the dish and gave it back to you, and now you're supposed to…….. thank them for giving the dish back??

But of course—that's not their experience of it at all. _Their_ experience is that you showed up with a cake, charged them five dollars, but they thought the cake was too sweet so they gave you Monopoly money and an acorn and then told you how to fix the recipe so they'd give you five dollars next time. But the only way for them to know that that's not _your_ experience of it is to tell them, "Sorry, I would rather you just ate the cake and didn't give me five dollars **or** Monopoly money and an acorn, but instead just ate the damn cake and kept your recipe, or stopped eating the cake halfway through."

Maybe this is naïve of me, but I actually think that most people here are engaging in good faith. I think that the people who are saying, "But what do I leave as a comment if I didn't like the thing???" want to do the thing that their authors want and expect in exchange for their time. And—naturally, since I'm one of them—I don't think that the authors who want fandom to operate as a gift economy are expecting unreasonable things of their readers. I think the problem is just that not everyone's expectations are the same, and that's causing a lot of friction and pain that no one really needs.


	2. Responses to porcupine-girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because they aren't my original material, I'm not posting the content of any of **porcupine-girl** 's comments here, or of **breathedout** intermediate reply, both of which informed these posts. Tumblr!! ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ However, **porcupine-girl** I think offered what actually is the best solution to the problem we're trying to address following my second response (below), which is: **offer to beta** for the author on whose work you would, otherwise, leave negative feedback. [The thread, up to and including her final response, is saved here on Archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20181206234734/https://porcupine-girl.tumblr.com/post/180652615684/greywash-porcupine-girl-greywash).

**Response #1** : (regarding the use of "fic suggestions or requests" as, specifically, euphemistic wording—)

> Okay, so—first: I don't think that euphemisms are the fruit of the devil; but no, I don't think you should use "fic suggestions or requests" as a blanket cover for, say, telling someone that that they're a terrible writer and their characterization sucked. But I think that there's some twofold purpose in formulating the request like this.
> 
> First, part of what I'm get at is what HBBO brought up: if what you have to say can't be formulated as a "fic suggestion or request," and is, in fact, an insult, it's not appropriate to offer, full stop. This is _precisely_  for the reason you're talking about, with the street musician: it's rude! 
> 
> But moving that conversation to a one-on-one environment, which is what—in my experience—most authors will want to do if they _do_  accept fic requests or suggestions of any kind (whether or not that includes criticism, constructive or otherwise) also acts to defuse the situation on a couple different levels. First, it adds a time delay where a reader can think about whether or not this is a remark they actually want to make. Second, it forces them to actually confront the author they're making the remark to, in a one-on-one context, which tends to humanize the author as more than just, like, an anonymous form on some rando fic they found on AO3.
> 
> Third, and this is where I think this gets especially tricky: my personal feeling is that the real problem here is a consent problem. This is kind of the vanity Googling issue? I don't vanity Google because I'm, like, 100% sure there's critical shit about me all over the place and I don't want to read it. I made the mistake of reading the bookmarks on one of my fics once, like, five years ago, and one of the comments made it almost impossible for me to write for about eight months. My fault! I didn't think about who bookmarks were _for_! But comments _aren't_ like bookmarks, and they _aren't_ like vanity Googling: they're the direct interface between reader and author. That's their purpose. They are intended for authors to read. _I want to get unsolicited negative shit out of the space that is explicitly intended for authors to read_ , and—in the specific case of AO3—the space that is culturally where the people engaging in gift economy fandom go to _leave gifts_ for authors whose work they enjoy.
> 
> What I am aiming for is just for there to be some kind of firewall in between those readers and the authors who, in fact, enjoy nice comments that get left on their doorstep, but beyond that don't really want to engage with reader input. I do understand that there is a secondary question of _what kind_ of reader suggestions are or are not cool, and I would **absolutely** encourage authors to be really upfront about what kind of suggestions they do and do not want: "Hi, thanks for commenting! I accept prompts at myurl.tumblr.com/ask but I don't want constructive criticism or negative feedback" is, I think, a 100% okay and productive way to respond to someone leaving you a comment that asks if you accept "fic suggestions or requests," from an author in the fannish gift economy (sorry, HBBO) to leave to a reader who may or may not be operating on the other side of that divide.
> 
> Yes, that does put some onus for assertiveness on authors, but I think… that's okay? I don't think it's appropriate to be dictatorial about what people should want to get out of fandom, but I _do_  think it's appropriate to try to set and respect boundaries interpersonally, in fandom just as in any other social space. 
> 
> And FWIW I would, personally, _way_ rather get an comment that asked me if I wanted "fic suggestions or requests" (to which I could then reply by saying I didn't want critical feedback) than a comment that asked me if I wanted "constructive criticism" (to which I only had to give a yes or no answer) because a) the ambiguity of the former is going to be less emotionally painful get as an unsolicited comment than the implicit criticism of the second would be; and b) like HBBO, I almost universally do not want either from people I don't have a relationship with, so I can just tell them that, and we can both move on.

**Response #2** : (proposing some alternative phrasing—)

> Yeah, the wording issue is an interesting question. I meant it more in terms of: I _do_ think that it's helpful to offer a wording or set of wordings that people, from the not-gift-economy side of the divide, can look at and see not as, like, a code word, but more as a template. Like how I am thirty-seven goddamned years old and I still have to Google, "how to write a thank-you note" every time I have to write a thank-you note.
> 
> The tough part, here, is that I can only really nail down what kind of wording would be hard for me personally to take on board, which is a really limited evidence set, and also a _negative_ evidence set, which makes it hard to come up with a positive example. Does getting rid of the "fic" help, do we think? "Do you accept suggestions or requests for future work?" Or is it the "requests" that's a problem? "Do you accept suggestions?" That's treading into "Do you accept criticism?" territory, I think, maybe? Hm. Tough to say.
> 
> Basically, I _don't_ think it's cool to go into an author's comments, "Do you accept critical feedback?", bam, end of comment, because that comment _is_ critical feedback, whether or not an author accepts it. But I don't know, quite, what to recommend that people _do_ say, which is why I opened it up to suggestions—but also, I'm an engineer, so I'm allergic to saying "don't do it this way" without offering a "but maybe you can do it this way" in exchange.


	3. Response to notagarroter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again, since it's not my original content, I'm not copy-pasting **notagarroter** 's post, [but this thread (including their comment) is archived here on Archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20181207001232/https://greywash.tumblr.com/post/180639899007/notagarroter-greywash-okay-well-so-a-bunch).
> 
> Regarding the legal question of asking for money in fandom. Also, "customer satisfaction" in regard to creative works.

I don't disagree with you! I think I covered a lot of what you're addressing [in this reply](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886331/chapters/39662400#workskin) [ _Ed._ Response #1] (Tumblr, why do you make threading so hard), but TL;DR—I mostly just want there to be a shift in culture that allows that some readers are going to want to leave critical comments—including concrit—and some authors are going to find those comments absolutely abysmally painful; so all I want to do is to add a consent firewall to give authors an opportunity to say, "No, I don't want that kind of suggestion," or "No, I don't want your suggestions _at all_." This is a _way_  easier and _way_  less invasive ask than to request that the people who are thinking of fanfic in terms of things exchanged and things owed just… start… doing… fandom… differently, which—even if it were fair to ask it, which I'm not sure it is—they are just not ever going to do, because that's just not how humans operate.

And, just to be clear, re: this—

> > Because some people [in fandom] are asking for money for their work! Which they have every right to do!
> 
> Wait, do they?  What about copyright?

…I meant that people have every right to ask for money _for their work_ , as in, for their labor. In the particular case of fandom—and the linked [@fansplaining](https://tmblr.co/mvO0bxM7-IiZckl6jN5zB4A) episode goes into this in some depth—I think a lot of the confusion about this comes because fan artists ABSOLUTELY charge for their work, they do it _all the time_ , but there's still a lot of fannish discomfort about fan writers doing the same.


	4. Response to loneliii-aura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again, since it's not my original content, I'm not copy-pasting loneliii-aura's post, but [this thread (including their comment) is archived here on Archive.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20181207004120/https://greywash.tumblr.com/post/180654777777/loneliii-aura-tyrannosaurus-trainwreck).
> 
> Regarding coming from a fannish community where concrit is normalized, and leaving well-framed/gentle concrit. Also, the difficulties of actually leaving "constructive criticism" outside an established editorial relationship with the author.

You said this:

> I guess rather than gift or exchange economy, **it treats fic like art**.

Yes, I agree, to an extent. It _does_ treat fic like art, made in an environment like art class or a workgroup. But not everyone in fandom is here to make art, and you are not in everyone else's art class or art workgroup.

Again. I'm not saying that concrit is universally bad, or anything like that. What I'm saying is that **it's universally inappropriate without the author's consent** , and posting concrit in an author's comments without _an affirmative signal from them_ they'd like it is _universally_ offering concrit without the author's consent. Full stop. The _only_ time you should be offering concrit in comments without actively asking first is an author has explicitly stated that they welcome concrit in their notes. If you came up in a community where, universally, concrit is accepted, great! That just means that part of the social contract of that community explicitly authorized concrit. **But AO3 is not that community; fandom, writ large, is not that community**. You can look at the comments and tags and reblogs on this post, on any post about fannish commenting culture, and get your counterexample. Lots of people in fandom do not consent to your concrit. So don't leave it without asking.

 _This is not about you_. This is about protecting the experience of fandom, for all fans, including fans who may not want or understand concrit, including fans whose creative life is so embryonic _that any criticism, no matter how gently worded, will make them never write again_. If you think those fans don't exist: they do. [ETA: [here is a specific anon discussing a similar issue from the point of view of someone who has been on the receiving end of criticism that drove them away from writing fic](https://web.archive.org/web/20181207010136/http://greenbergsays.tumblr.com/post/180655960993/honestly-i-appreciate-what-youve-been-saying).] They exist, and they write fic, and they post it on Tumblr and the AO3. This bit _is_ about you: those authors are like little sparks, just _trying_ to start a fire, If you come in and offer them ABA critique, you, personally, are going to be responsible for putting that fire out.

Don't do that.

 _Even if_ you, personally, are good at offering constructive criticism; _even if_ you, personally, can offer any author in the world criticism that improves their story (which—just so we're clear, you can't, because no one can), _even if_ you came from an area within fandom where concrit is culturally normalized: lots and lots and lots of people don't want your concrit. **_I_** don't want your concrit. I could—and in fact will, behind the cut—go into why I, specifically, don't want your unsolicited criticism, but _that's not the point_. The point is that fandom contains a lot of of people who don't want concrit, and who will not experience your concrit, however gently you word it, as anything other than you being a total cock. A _lot_ of those people will experience your concrit in ways that are damaging to their self-esteem and mental health, **_no matter how gently you word it_** , because they think that they are, in their comments, in an environment in which they are not supposed to have to deal with criticism, of any kind; and _they have good reasons to think that_. And, for some of them, your concrit runs the possibility of very possibly you destroying their desire and will to create, _forever._

If you can't take the extra two seconds it takes to leave a comment asking whether or not the author wants your criticism before you leave it, not only will a lot of authors think you're a cock, **you actually are _being_ a cock**, because what you're saying is: "Well, _I_ come from a culture where criticism is a good thing, so _even though_ this person (*small cough* that's me, @greywash *small cough*) who has been intensely pan-fannish for 22 years and has seen a lot of different kinds and parts of fandom is saying, ‘Concrit is not culturally accepted or desired in all parts of fandom, so maybe check if it is, with this author, before you leave it', _my_ culture is better than _that_ culture, so I'm just gonna leave the concrit anyway." That is a dick move. Don't do that. Why do you feel like you have to do that? What is so hard about asking first?

I deliberately didn't go into, in my post, what makes criticism constructive, because that doesn't have anything to do with my point. (Half of) my point is: **_any_ criticism, no matter how gently worded, no matter how functionally useful, is neither expected nor desired by large swathes of the fannish community, and that's okay**. This has to do with—in part—the historic and cultural roots of fandom, which may be invisible to a lot of young fans.

Look, I'm a woman, but I'm also an engineer and I've been in heavily male educational and social spaces since I was a very small child, being socialized to be rude AF so as not to seem too soft for my field; and so my default tact setting is "tact? what is tact?" So when I was a young fan, coming up in an environment (Usenet and IRC and mailing lists) where access to fandom was much more mediated than it is now, I spent a lot of time getting privately and gently smacked down by older and more experienced fans who were trying to teach me how to to engage in fannish culture—which is a) a heavily female space, where kindness and social ties count for a lot; and b) a culture that intensely values the sharing of joy—without being incredibly rude.

And what those fannish mentors taught me was what _I_ am trying to teach _you_ : fandom isn't art school, it isn't English class, and fandom doesn't mean the same thing to all people. If you want to come participate in fandom, you have to have respect for what other people want to get out of fandom, _even if_ what those people want out of fandom is something that you think is silly, or reductive, or pointless, or dumb. **Because the only thing that all parts of fandom have in common is that they are fannish, and that they are social**. That's it. They involve multiple people, engaging in fannish thinking. That's it! Literally everything else about fandom—do you write fic? do you write meta? do you make art? do you consume fic? do you consume art? do you want to make friends? do you want to make playlists? do you want to make soft toys based on the characters? do you roleplay? do you go to cons? do you want to talk about ships? do you want to talk about cinematography?—varies from fannish enclave to fannish enclave and from fan to fan.

Here's my basic point: fannish culture isn't monolithic. You came up in a culture that values concrit, that's great! But not everyone in fandom values concrit. Some people in fandom think that unsolicited concrit is **rude** and may also find it **intensely painful**. If you offer concrit anyway without checking first that it's going to be accepted, you're not respecting that different people in fandom live inside different cultural frameworks, and **that makes you a self-centered asshole**.

I said I'd get into why I don't want unsolicited concrit behind the cut, even though it's kind of a red herring, because this issue _also_ infuriates me, and it's like five thirty in the morning and I haven't had any coffee yet so talking about things that infuriate me on the internet seems like a great idea; and also because—unlike a lot of people in fandom—I _am_ in fandom to make art; and—also unlike a lot of people in fandom—I both welcome and in fact get intense, in-depth criticism of my work, so it feels to me like I'm the right person to take you down on this one, my friend.

Let me be really clear about this: **I have zero problems with (solicited) criticism of my work**. I love it, in fact. It feeds my soul. I spend, like, literal hours, every single week, talking about the mechanics of craft with @havingbeenbreathedout, who is both my beta and editor and also my queerplatonic life partner, so—we live together; we talk about art all the time; we criticize each other's art all the time: art and the criticism of each other's art is foundational to our relationship. She's finished a large-scale project more recently than I have but I spent _a literal year_ making her rewrite one chapter, over and over and over again, because it didn't do what she wanted. And if and when we next work on my content, I both hope and expect that she will make _me_ rewrite something, over and over and over again, as necessary, until it does what _I_ want, because that is part of how our relationship works.

But the difference between talking about craft with @havingbeenbreathedout, or, say, @oulfis, or @septembriseur, or @lbmisscharlie, or @notagarroter, or @tiltedsyllogism, or @pangodillo, or @roane72, or @imogenedisease, or [@virtual-particle](https://tmblr.co/mN6-xWqewyujMgQiqrMV98A), or any one of the many, many other fans with whom I have or have had long-term, editing- and/or craft-discussion-based relationships and discussions over the twenty-plus years I have been in fandom, is that **I _know_ them**, and I know not only something about what their interests and backgrounds are, and therefore what particular areas of my work and its goals they are well-equipped to address; but I also have a sense of where their biases and blindspots are, _and they, too, have a sense of mine_.

Part of why @havingbeenbreathedout and I work together so frequently is that we share a lot of artistic interests, but approach them from _wildly_ different directions. We both are _extremely_ interested in characters who lie and unreliable narration; we're both fascinated by human memory; we both like characters—especially female characters—who are complicated, and difficult, and flawed. But I'm an aromantic and very not-neurotypical tech person, and she's a passionately artistic English major who works for a crunchy-granola nonprofit. I approach writing, and characters, and art, the way I approach _people_ : that is to say, as these complicated, sometimes-unpredictable black boxes that I have spent the past not-quite-four-decades relentlessly observing and analyzing, because they were, to start with, so totally baffling to me. She understands people a lot better than I do on an intuitive level, and she also has this whole extra background in formal literary criticism and analysis that, for me, stopped when I took my last required lit class about fifteen years ago. Literary technique, the formal mechanics of writing, is not something I have, on my own, a great grounding in, but she _does_. That said, she's less science-y and iterative than I am, so I can sometimes see places in her work where a conclusion is suggested, but not followed through— _especially_ as it pertains to characterization. But we're both capable of holding the other up against our goals as writers, because we can break down the other's work and monitor what effect it does, and does not, produce in a reader who's receptive to the ideas that we're trying to convey; and we're lucky enough to have complimentary weak spots. I am probably never going to catch her out on an incorrectly constructed literary allusion, but that's okay! She's just fine at constructing her literary allusions on her own! And if she wants a check on something like that, she has a large community of other potential editors who could give her feedback on her literary allusions.

My point here is: not all criticism is created equal. @[loneliii-aura](http://loneliii-aura.tumblr.com/), you seem very articulate, and also like you are probably an excellent technical writer—probably a better writer on a technical-mechanics level than I am, honestly, because (as this unbeta'ed 5:30 AM screed suggests), _I am not a very good writer on a technical-mechanics level_ without several rounds of both self-editing and HBBO's beta. But if you came into something I wrote and said, "Oh, wow, I really enjoyed your characterization of Supreme Galactic Commander Arghdulpglopo! I think that this story might be improved if you shortened your sentences in some places, but I'm really looking forward to reading what you write next!", you know what I would think? I would think, " **Who the hell is _this_ bitch**."

Part of what makes constructive criticism constructive is that the recipient has a framework in which to interpret it. If I don't know you, I don't have that context. If you're commenting on my sentence structure, how do I know that you, in fact, know something about sentence structure? If you're commenting on my characterization, how do I know that you, in fact, know anything about how people actually behave, or the mechanics of communicating that within fictional text?

Most of the "unsoliticited concrit" I get falls into one of three categories:

  * **Not actually criticism; just a complaint**. For example, someone telling me that they didn't like [my John/Sherlock story because in it, John enthusiastically goes down on a lady](https://archiveofourown.org/works/324584/chapters/538106). I got this feedback _allllllllllll the time_ after that chapter, not just in comments but by email and Tumblr ask, with varying degrees of personal venom attached. Sorry, buddy, but—while, yeah, I wrote that story six years ago and I have a _lot_ of shit I would change if I were writing it today—in addition to that scene being _smokin' hot_ , it does a ton of narrative work!!!  
  
If I cut that scene completely because _eww, ladies_ , I would have to find another way to communicate: 1) John's frantic, confused grasping for what he wants to believe is sexual normalcy; 2) his general distaste for good decisions; 3) the ways in which he is constructing a dishonest but self-protective personal narrative to shield himself from the most emotionally excruciating parts of Sherlock's faked death; 4) the ways in which Tina is playing and manipulating him; and (in the scene immediately following the chapter break) 5) the ways in which John, instinctively, resists that when it has to do with Sherlock—even after John has, ostensibly, cut all ties with him. Also I'm baaaasically a lesbian, so, mmmm, ladies. Also fuck off.  

  * **Not actually constructive; just criticism, (often) worded gently**. The problem here is that people assume that they know what art a person is trying to make. In fandom? This means, in my experience, that **readers assume that I am trying to write a romance novel**. I am literally _never_ trying to write a romance novel. I write a lot of _un_ -romance novels—things that play with and subvert the expectations of romance novels, especially romance novels that play according to fannish convention—but you coming in and telling me how to make my story a better romance novel? Not helpful. Because I'm not trying to write a romance novel.  
  
The thing about making art is that the person making the art gets to pick what that art is going to be. [If you come into my story about navigating the complexities of sexual desire and action within a queer context, and tell me that a) you find my depiction of queer sexuality unrealistic, and b) you think the story would be improved by me adding something that violates my fundamental conception of what the story is intended to be and accomplish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887948), that's not constructive criticism. It's just you having an opinion on the internet. As a person who [routinely has opinions on the internet](https://web.archive.org/web/20181207010220/https://greywash.tumblr.com/tagged/shut-up-gins), I support you! Go! Have opinons! Be free!! But don't dump them in my comments pretending that they're going to make my story better. They're not. That is not constructive criticism. If you haven't sat down and talked with an author—or any artist—about what they're they're trying to do with their work, how could it _possibly_ be constructive criticism? How can you possibly know what they're trying to accomplish, and so how can you possibly help them get there without asking?  

  * Actually **a criticism I maybe agree with and might otherwise like to incorporate into my work** , but delivered in an inappropriate environment. I almost never make changes to posted fictional work—the exception is for fixing uncaught typos, which: I don't care how many times you've edited a thing, there will always be typos you catch only after posting—but if you come into my comments and say, "Oh, man, I really wish you'd worded this paragraph differently," _even if I, too, also wish I had worded that paragraph differently_ , I'm probably not going to change it.  
  
Why? Well—it's complicated. Part of this has to do with my biggest issue with the user-created internet writ large, which is: it's super hard to keep track of an authoritative record. If someone publishes a story containing (e.g.) a racist slur, and the author then goes in and edits out the slur, the record that the story contained that racist slur vanishes. I think that this is probably, overall, a good thing—fewer racist slurs—but some authors are going to do that bait-and-switch thing where they first edit out the slur, then reply to the commenter to say, "What are you talking about? I didn't use a racist slur! I'm not a racist!" That's gaslighting and it's shitty, but it unfortunately does happen. One of the things I like about paper books is that there's a record (in the form of earlier/different editions) of what was originally said, even if later editions improve upon that work.  
  
Second… just from a fannish perspective? One of my all-time favorite stories was posted to a holiday exchange community, and then edited to make the ending more overtly happy and resolved when the author posted the story to their personal archive. The holiday exchange community no longer exists, so the only version of this story that you can find, at this point, is the edited version. I _vastly_ preferred the original version. I preferred the original version **so strongly** that I went and downloaded the edited version and then reconstructed the original ending as best I could in my own, personal local copy of the story, so that I could read and re-read and re-read the story with the original, more understated ending. I'm never going to share it or anything; I just want to be able to reread it and repeat my original reader experience! And I'd hate to put one of my readers in a similar position.



Basically my point here is: unless you're flagging a typo (in which case—okay, for me personally, that's fine, but honestly I'd still rather you raised it privately, and also, _it is not going to be fine for everybody_ ), I'm not going to edit my work in response to a comment. It's just never going to happen. So even if your comment _is_ gently worded, even if your comment _is_ actually a criticism and not a complaint, even if your comment _is_ actually in line with my "artistic vision" (ugh, part of my little mechanical soul died, typing that, but whatever) _—I'm still not going to change my fic_. My fic is done. It's too late. If someone had given me that comment in beta, sure, maybe I would've changed something, but now? Nah, brah. I have, on occasion, considered writing a "second edition" of some stories, where I actually went through and remixed my own older work to improve the things in it I couldn't've fixed when I wrote it, but _could_ fix now, but you know how many times I've actually done that, in 20+ years in fandom? Zero. I have done that zero times. If I did it now it'd be on one of my old stories that's not online anymore, but—yeah. Zero. Zero times.

I get wanting to be able to participate in criticism, and I get wanting to help people make art. I'm just saying— _even if_ someone (in theory) wants criticism, your criticism, _that particular criticism_ , please, for the love of Beyoncé, don't do it in their comments without asking.


End file.
